Selected poems from Les Fleurs du mal, translated for song

Archive for the ‘Spleen and Ideal’ Category

Rest, my love –
Your bland expression fixed and sculpted as your hair
Severe as the black marble of this monument.
The one plunked down to mark your dripping pit,
Hemmed in by gravel, clay, and grit,
Can you be unaware that it’s your final dwelling?

Your breast, my love –
It couldn’t move if there were space or there was air.
No travel, only shifting with the continents.
Is pressure from the walls against your thighs
Relief compared to when those guys
Wrung out your guts and dried your eyes to ease the swelling?

Your tomb it tells me everything forever
(For a tomb knows best a poet’s heart).
Your tomb nags at your spirit as to whether
Your mastery of the unfaithful arts

Aided in negotiating terms
For your foul afterlife? As worms
Devour your flesh for every course,
Your soul is meat for your remorse.

Hear her prowling in my thoughts
louder than her silent mews
A beautiful, a charming cat
striding gentle beast so smooth

if her voice reveals her strife
tones both rich and growly deep
her tender timbre, secret smile
veers so quiet and discreet

her purring drone unlocks my heart
reveals a porthole to my soul
with notions turned to plangent verse
as if her potion made me whole

to hear her voice, she brings to me
a wordless vibrant strain
I hear her voice, I feel alive
no longer I feel pain

the finest bow, the softest pick
will never match her touch
the purest song from my heartstrings
she manages to coax
and gives it velvet harmonies
like angels from on high
this cat, a subtle mystery
sophisticated muse

From the gold and brownish strands
Making up her shiny coat
Her essence wrapped me in its hold
Even after just one touch

She holds court in her domain
Judges, presides and inspires
Maybe she’s a fairy
Or all knowing as a god

Her magnetic gaze attracts
My eyes to hers, and hers to mine
soon I’m drawn into myself
To ponder my collected life

reflecting her pale eyes of fire
I ‘m left in living wonder still
Of clearest beacons, living opals
fixed like targets on my frame

Tell me does your heart ever try to fly away, Agatha?
Far from the green waters of this filthy city
To an island blue and magical
With waters of untouched virginity?
Tell me does your heart ever try to fly away, Agatha?

The sea, the endless sea consoles us in our prison
Some demon taught the sea to sing and the winds will let us listen
To lullaby our greasy eyes to sleep.
The sea, the endless sea consoles us in our prison.

O, how far off you are, and how far you’ll always be
My sweet dream of paradise
Where blue skies keep watch over our love
And each thing we’ve loved we’re allowed to love twice
Where the sinking heart can kiss the sky above
O, how far off you are, my love

O, love was like Heaven in those early days
Singing and kissing, asleep in the flowers
Behind the hills above the violins played
Carrying magic through the moonlit hours
O, love was like Heaven in those early days

That innocence I’m always longing for
Is it farther off now than my own end?
Through no human cry can the past be restored
No song I sing will ever bring it back again.
The innocence I’m longing for
The innocence I’m longing for
The innocence I’m longing for
The innocence I’m longing for